Tuesday, 02 February 2010

A successful program created by the United States military to recruit skilled immigrants has been stopped in its tracks by the Defense Department. What began as a pilot program in February of last year has since become a thriving strategy for increasing the ranks of skilled personnel in the country"s armed forces -- up until the very moment it came to an unnecessary halt.

Although the military has attracted generations of talented service members, the relatively recent advent of a volunteer army along with renewed military engagements abroad have necessitated more aggressive recruiting practices. The recently stalled program involved recruiting skilled immigrants in America on temporary visas and offering a path toward citizenship in return for the use of an immigrant"s language, medical, and other skills.

Given the increasingly difficult and sometimes prohibitively expensive process of gaining American citizenship, many immigrants have welcomed military service as a means of becoming citizens. Within a very short span of time after the program"s creation, the Army exceeded its recruiting expectations; yielding, by its own account, particularly high-quality servicemembers. In the hopes of qualifying for the program, more than 14,000 immigrants have contacted the military and passed a first round of vetting.

For the pilot program to continue, the Defense Department needed to complete a review of the (clearly successful) program. Instead, it opted to drag its heels. No doubt, the general incompetence of a government bureaucracy played a role here. Unable to see a good thing in front of them, the Defense Department instead chose a route that hurts our military, as in the case of another senseless decision regarding nine Army linguists dismissed because they were discovered to be homosexual.

Let us not forget that America is in the midst of two wars, which demand the skills of those who are willing to serve. Although the current economic crisis has, for the time being, dramatically increased recruiting numbers throughout the country, the increased troop presence forecast for Afghanistan, the ever-dangerous situation in Iraq, aid efforts in Haiti, and other foreign military commitments require a steady stream of new service members. At the very least, more American troops would relieve veteran soldiers subjected to dangerously long tour duties and time away from their families.

In addition to the plan"s obvious strategic advantages, the moral value of allowing skilled immigrants to gain citizenship and hopefully create better lives for themselves and their families is immeasurable. Right now, there are immigrants who are ready and willing to serve their adopted country -- volunteering in a time of war no less, with a real threat of harm, when the average American citizen (in fact, an overwhelming number of Americans) is more than happy to sit on the sidelines. This is a much easier, much more worthwhile path to citizenship than any proposed by Congress, one with positives that far outweigh any negatives, and we"ve decided to simply sit on it.

There is no doubt: the federal government enjoys working at a snail"s pace. It loves to start crucially important reforms and then decide to take an absurd amount of time finishing them (health care anyone?). It has failed to promptly deliver results when they are most needed, as in the case of the bungled response to Hurricane Katrina. And it is far too common for the government to put pressing initiatives on the back burner and never return to them. But having skilled personnel in our military, now more than ever, is of critical importance.

Photo By: Greg Westfall

 

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